William Danaher, Jr.
Darren Marks
The Rt. Rev. John Chapman
Academic Employment Opportunity
Dean William Danaher Travels to Paris
Gordon Hamilton Receives R. B. Y. Scott Prize
SSHRC Grant Awarded for Centre for Public Theology
Huron Student Receives International Fellowship
New Dean of Theology, William Danaher
Darren Marks Honoured by Princeton
John Chapman to be Bishop of Ottawa
Gordon Hamilton Receives ASOR Frank Moore Cross Award
Deadline to apply, December 31, 2008. Further details here.
From September 24-27 the French American Foundations hosted a group of thirty-two French and American Young Leaders, including Huron's Dean of Theology, for a series of seminars, official visits and receptions in Paris and Strasbourg. This year's Young Leaders Program was organized around the priorities of the French presidency of the EU, specifically sustainable development and energy, immigration and defense. The Young Leaders Program, a flagship program of the French-American Foundations, was created in 1981 to foster a new network of trans-Atlantic leaders.
July 2008. The Canadian Society of Biblical Studies awarded The Origins of the West Semitic Alphabet in Egyptian Scripts (CBQMS 40; Washington, DC: Catholic Biblical Association of America, 2006), by Old Testament Language & Literature Professor, Dr. Gordon Hamilton, the R. B. Y. Scott prize. The award of $500, in honour of Robert Balgarnie Young Scott, one of Canada's most renowned Old Testament Scholars, is announced each year at the Annual Society dinner.
Dr. Hamilton commented, "I am particularly pleased that this is the second time this decade that a Huron faculty member (or emeritus) has won this award. G. Parke-Taylor won it in 2001."
This book previously was awarded the ASOR Frank Moore Cross Award.
June 2008. The Faculty of Theology is pleased to announce award of a SSHRC Aids to Small Universities grant of $90,000 over three years from 2008-11 to develop a new Centre for Public Theology at Huron University College. The purpose of the Centre is to provide an academic forum through which Canadian and international theologians, social scientists and other scholars, together with religious leaders, policy makers and the public can engage in research and instructive dialogue on theological, moral and political issues facing society.
The Centre will be Canadian based but largely focused on local-global problems. It will organize and host an annual conference, working in a triennium cycle dealing with (i) politics and justice; (ii) human life; and (iii) the environment. From 2008-11, the conferences projected are: (i) Canada and War in Afghanistan (2008-09); (ii) the Canadian
Churches and HIV-AIDS in the Global Context (2009-10); and (iii) Theological Perspectives on Global Warming and Energy Policy (2010-11).
Through innovations in new technologies and the web-based dissemination of ideas, along with more conventional modes of publication, the fruits of the resulting scholarship will be available to the public and to the churches and other faiths as well as to the academy.
Further details will be available soon.
ATLANTA, June 2008: Kaitlin Nelson, a Huron B.Th. student, has been selected to receive a 2008 Fund for Theological Education Undergraduate Fellowship which recognizes students who have gifts for leadership and are exploring the possibility of ministry as a vocation. As an FTE Undergraduate Fellow, Nelson will receive $2,000 for tuition, other educational expenses, or a self-designed experience related to the exploration of ministry. She will also attend the 2008 FTE Conference on Excellence in Ministry June 11-15 at Emory University's Candler School of Theology in Atlanta.
The Rev. Dr. Stephen M. Larson nominated Nelson for the fellowship award.
FTE Undergraduate Fellows are selected competitively from a pool of applicants from across the U.S. and Canada. They must be nominated by a professor, school administrator, pastor or campus minister; hold a minimum 3.0 grade point average; have an interest in exploring ministry as a vocation; and demonstrate leadership in a church or school community. The Fellows were chosen by a national committee of theological educators and church leaders.
The fellowships are awarded annually as part of the Fund's objective to increase the number of highly capable young people exploring or preparing for ordained ministry as a profession.
The Fund for Theological Education is a leading ecumenical advocate for excellence and diversity in Christian ministry and theological scholarship. It supports the next generation of leaders among pastors and scholars, annually providing $1.5 million in fellowships and support to gifted young people from all denominations and racial/ethnic backgrounds. Since 1954, FTE has awarded nearly 6,000 fellowships in partnership with those committed to the future of quality leadership for the church. For more information visit www.thefund.org.
Dr. Ramona Lumpkin, Principal, is pleased to announce the appointment of the Reverend Dr. William Danaher, Jr. as the next Dean of the Faculty of Theology at Huron University College, effective July 1, 2008.
Dr. Danaher was awarded the A.B. degree in history from Brown University, the M.Div. (cum laude) from the Protestant Episcopal Seminary in Virginia, and the M.A., M.Phil., and PhD (Religious Ethics) from Yale (2002). Ordained an Episcopal priest in the Diocese of Connecticut in 1996, he served as curate in Grace Church, New York City, assisted at Christ Church, New Haven, and was assistant chaplain at the Episcopal Church at Yale from 1994-1997.
Dr. Danaher has held the positions of Assistant Professor and Associate Professor in the School of Theology, University of the South, in Sewanee, Tennessee. He is currently Associate Professor of Christian Ethics and Moral Theology in the John Henry Hobart Chair at The General Theological Seminary in New York.
In 2004, Dr. Danaher became a member in residence at the Center of Theological Inquiry (CTI) located in Princeton, New Jersey, which is affiliated with Princeton Theological Seminary. The purpose of CTI is to provide a collaborative, interdisciplinary environment for scholars working in the field of religion. Also in 2004, he received the John Hines Preaching Award, a national award given by Virginia Theological Seminary that recognizes sermons grounded in Scripture and focused on issues of social justice. From 2005-2006, Dr. Danaher worked as a victim-offender reconciliation facilitator for first-time, non-violent juvenile offenders in two counties in Tennessee.
With the support of a grant from the Seminary Council on Mission (SCOM), in 2006, Dr. Danaher led an inter-racial group of seminarians from Sewanee on a trip to South Africa to expand their understanding of reconciliation and restorative justice through the work of the church in that country. This spring, Dr. Danaher has helped organize a conference for the H. F. Guggenheim Foundation on religion, reconciliation and restorative justice, gathering together academics, activists and church-leaders from South Africa, Uganda, and Liberia at Stellenbosch University in South Africa.
In 2007, Dr. Danaher became the first priest selected as a young leader by the French-American Foundation, which is dedicated to fostering relationships between French and American leaders in areas of business, politics, and academics.
We look forward to having Dr. Danaher join the faculty of Huron University College and assume a role of leadership within the Faculty of Theology.
"Each year, the Director of the Center of Theological Inquiry in Princeton invites a distinguished group of advanced scholars, religious leaders and public thinkers (no more than 20) to consider the future of theological inquiry in the church, academy and world. The aim of the Luce Hall Conversations is to inform the Center's mission and to transform our common quest for understanding. The 2008 conversations mark the Center's 30th Anniversary and anticipate major changes for advanced theological and interdisciplinary scholarship over the next 30 years.
"In recognition of Dr. Darren C. Marks' (Huron University College) excellent international work in theology and particular global theological themes, Dr. William Storrar, Director of the CTI, and Dr. Iain Torrance, President of Princeton Theological Seminary, is pleased to invite him to be a conversationalist for 2008."
The meetings are in Princeton on the 10-11th of April.
The Rev. Canon Dr. John H. Chapman, Dean of Theology, was elected the next bishop of the Diocese of Ottawa, to be installed May 17, 2007. Details about the election can be found here in the Anglican Journal. An Acting Dean will be appointed while the College searches for a permanent replacement.
"Huron's Faculty of Theology has flourished under John's visionary leadership," said Dr. Ramona Lumpkin, Huron's Principal. "With the support of his colleagues, he has developed exciting new academic programs, enhanced the College's relations with the Church, extended our outreach to the Caribbean, and overseen a period of growth and prosperity for Theology at Huron.
"The Diocese of Ottawa is fortunate indeed to gain John as their new leader, and we wish him all the best in his new role," stated Dr. Lumpkin.
The ASOR Frank Moore Cross Award is presented annually (or as is appropriate) to the author of the best book published on Ancient Near Eastern Epigraphy within the past year.
The 2006 award was presented by Joe D. Seger, ASOR Past President to Gordon J. Hamilton at the Honors and Awards program of the American Schools of Oriental Research at its Annual Meeting in Washington D.C. Friday November 17, 2006, whose citation read as follows:
"W. F. Albright and his students, most notably Frank Moore Cross, helped to build the foundations for the disciplined study of Proto-Canaanite and Old Canaanite inscriptions. While Albright worked primarily on the Proto-Canaanite texts, Cross concentrated on the Old Canaanite inscriptions from later in the second millennium BCE. Together, they attempted to channel some of the romance and excitement of investigating the origin and early transmission of the alphabet into disciplined academic approaches concerning ancient handwriting, language, and the contextual analysis of specific inscriptions." (NEA 65:1 (2002): 35)
I quote these words from a 2002 Near Eastern Archateology article by this year's recipient of the Frank Moore Cross Award, who has himself just produced a major addition to this legacy. Gordon J. Hamilton's book The Origins of the West Semitic Alphabet in Egyptian Scripts is a well written and easily accessible compendium of the graphic prototypes for the West Semitic alphabet in Egyptian writing and includes a detailed survey of all early alphabetic inscriptions from the Southern Levant.
Gordon Hamilton received his BA degree from Brown University in 1974 and an STM from Harvard Divinity School in 1979. He was one of the students of Frank Cross in the Harvard Near Eastern Languages program and received his Ph.D. with distinction in 1985. During 1984, he was the recipient of one of ASOR's Endowment for Biblical Research sponsored travel grants for study of Canaanite inscriptions in Egypt and at the Albright Institute in Israel. Between 1985 and '88, he spent several years as a Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of Calgary and, since 1988, he has taught at Huron University College, London, Ontario, Canada, where he became a Full Professor in 2000. He is the co-author of a book on Gender Bias in Scholarship and has published numerous other articles and reviews.
The Origins volume for which today's honor is awarded is based on Dr. Hamilton's Harvard dissertation "The Development of the Early Alphabet" which he has significantly revised and updated during the past several years. His new book was published this year by the Catholic Biblical Association. It immediately presents itself as the most comprehensive resource work now available on the backgrounds and theories relating to the emergence of the alphabet in the second millennium BC, and is a major contribution to the field.
There could thus not be a more suitable nominee for this year's ASOR Frank Moore Cross Publication Award. I am honored present it to Gordon J. Hamilton."
